


The thirties (a translation)

by KretinaDivina



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anarcho-Feminism, F/F, Feminist Themes, Firefox - Freeform, Translation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 16:14:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8898928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KretinaDivina/pseuds/KretinaDivina
Summary: Two anarcho-feminists exchange letters.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [A década de trinta.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2627426) by [alcapone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcapone/pseuds/alcapone). 



> All the lines marked with * are from the anarcho-feminist Brazilian author Maria Lacerda de Moura.
> 
> (Translator's Note: I chose to leave Lacerda de Moura's quotes in their original, more 'academic' style rather than 'translate' their meaning into a more everyday tone.)

The noise on the street was more than enough proof of the rise of the urban-industrial world. In the tiny room, Melisandre’s fingers danced rapidly over the keys of her typewriter. What little light there was in the space was sufficient.

A cigarette rested on the edge of the nightstand.

“Write this,” Selyse said suddenly. She was sprawled on the bed, the sheet covering most of her body. She was tall and lean, with ears that stuck out, pale eyes, black hair and a long, narrow nose. “In the capitalist society, the woman is a slave two times over*.” She paused, running her index finger over her top lip and playing with the hairs there. “She is protected, tutored, the ‘pupil’ of men, a creature domesticated by her master. And at the same time, she is the social slave of a society based on money and on the privileges maintained by the authorities of the State and the armed forces to defend power, control and monetized industry.*”

When she finished, Mel was still writing. The white sheet slipped from Sely’s shoulders, revealing her breasts.

“That’s your response?” Melisandre got up and for a second, her eyes looked as red as her hair. There she was, nude: the hair on her legs and armpits, her heart-shaped face and the ruby at the base of her throat that she never removed. She got into bed, draping herself over Selyse.

“It’s the least I can say about the nonsense they keep spouting.”

She turned to Mel, breathing deeply. Her husband Stannis had meetings with men in the medical circles and so their scorn for women's protests were not new to her. For them, a woman's biology made her inferior. Sometimes they cited a certain frivolity in the female brain as a justification for life of subjugation, of undesired domesticity and maternity. It was horrible to think of the world in which her daughter Shireen would have to live.

Stannis Baratheon had married her almost ten years ago and it was during this time, with the man she thought she'd have for her whole life, that she discovered the misery of being born a woman. When she met Melisandre, her life philosophy introduced Selyse to a world of theories and explanations for all the times she'd been silenced.

  
The Red Woman, as red as flame, stroked her stomach. She shivered.

"I know what you're thinking there and--" Before Mel could continue, Selyse pressed her lips to hers; Mel gasped into her mouth, sending a wave of heat through her body.

"I don't want to talk about it," she said to the redhead, who nodded and brought their lips together again.

Selyse slid her legs between Mel's, moving them apart. She let her thin hands glide down to the redhead's thighs and then ran her nails up her body. They kissed again. Mel shivered, savoring her lover's tongue.

They enjoyed the softness of each other's breasts as they brushed together, until the Red Woman stirred, creating friction between their nipples. Selyse lowered her lips from her jaw, dancing her tongue across the redhead's jugular.

"I found your note," Mel said. The brunette paused for a second, staring into her eyes. "'The world mutilated the woman through prejudices and social conventions. It made her unhappy and incomplete as a spinster and used her to solve men's sexual problems by creating a market for sex--prostitution, cabarets, casinos and whorehouses, the 'rendezvous' and the procuress.*'"

The redhead handed Selyse the paper with her writing on it. Sely sat up in bed.

"And I found yours. By the way, leaving something so valuable in my clothes is quite an interesting idea."

They both laughed. The brunette walked over to her belongings to read the note aloud.

"'In both free love and marriage, the man is equally a troglodyte: he has property rights to a woman, he can kill her if he betrays him, he is jealous and vengeful and might imagine that in woman he possesses a slave.*'"

Selyse became solemn looking at her lover's words. As both a woman and an adulterer, she understood the idea of not being able to find happiness without romance. It was too late to believe that she and any man could be on equal footing in a relationship. Stannis agreed with some of her views; he was also against prostitution, but his reasons for this diverged from hers. While Selyse saw prostitution as tantamount to rape, sex for the exclusive pleasure of the male, Stannis believed these women to be the cause of sexual deviation, as if they demanded to be objectified instead of their reality: being treated as objects by the male oppressor.

"It's true. Men think women are slaves for them to own."

Melisandre hugged her companion, warming her with her heat.

"Did you find the second letter?"

Mel responded in the affirmative and read:

"'The woman has been body only. The female soul has slept in the unconsciousness of a millennial evolution. The great question, then, is to uproot it from the sectarianism that kills reason, and to make it observe, to let imagination travel through all of Nature. In order to be free, it is indispensable that the woman emancipate herself through heart and reason, ceasing to be merely a core in order to know true sensibility, which flies like the waters gazing at the sun.*'"

Sely laughed loudly.

"What's funny?" Mel asked, confused.

Selyse Baratheon stared at her lover, smiling. She took her face in her hands and kissed her deeply.

"So many utopian ideas in just one day."

They fell into bed. The Red Woman suckled at Sely's neck, caressing her breasts. Sighs escaped from the brunette's mouth. She wrapped her arms around Mel's waist, pulling her body atop hers. She placed a hand on her lover's left breast and asked her to keep her breasts above her mouth. The brunette ran her tongue over Mel's nipples, then focusing it on her left breast while massaging her right. Mel moaned, rubbing against Selyse.

She no longer knew how much time had passed; she had given herself up, trembling and moaning, to the movements of the redhead's tongue between her legs. When Melisandre came up to kiss her, her lips were covered in her essence and the taste of it was good.


End file.
